June 11, 2025
Five Towns, One Vision: Inside Visit Haywood’s 10-Year Destination Master Plan
Send us a text As outdoor tourism continues to grow, how can mountain communities plan with intention—not just for visitors, but for the residents, businesses, and natural spaces that make them unique? In this episode of Exploration Local, I sit down with Corrina Ruffieux, Executive Director of Visit Haywood, to talk about Haywood County’s innovative approach to tourism. Their comprehensive 10-year destination master plan is designed not just to attract visitors, but to do so in a way that al...
As outdoor tourism continues to grow, how can mountain communities plan with intention—not just for visitors, but for the residents, businesses, and natural spaces that make them unique?
In this episode of Exploration Local, I sit down with Corrina Ruffieux, Executive Director of Visit Haywood, to talk about Haywood County’s innovative approach to tourism. Their comprehensive 10-year destination master plan is designed not just to attract visitors, but to do so in a way that aligns with the values of the community and protects what makes the area special.
We explore how Haywood County’s plan is rooted in stewardship, inclusivity, and a commitment to attracting visitors who share the local values of environmental respect, community care, and responsible tourism. The plan’s focus is on sustainable growth that ensures long-term benefits for residents, local businesses, and the area’s exceptional natural assets.
Through community-driven engagement and a clear brand identity, Haywood County is proving that it’s possible to grow tourism while protecting the very things that make the place worth visiting in the first place.
Mike Andress
Host, Exploration Local
828-551-9065
mike@explorationlocal.com
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00:00 - Introducing Haywood County's Vision
08:57 - Crafting the Master Plan
16:45 - Four Pillars of Sustainable Tourism
27:05 - Balancing Growth with Preservation
35:26 - Helene's Impact and Adaptation
40:44 - Implementing the 10-Year Vision
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What does it take for a rural mountain community to grow without losing its soul?
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In this episode, we head to Haywood County, north Carolina, a place where five distinct mountain towns are tucked between the Great Smoky Mountains, pisgah National Forest, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and is surrounded by wild rivers, scenic byways and a deep sense of place.
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In recent years, like many outdoor destinations, haywood County experienced a post-pandemic tourism surge.
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Like many outdoor destinations, haywood County experienced a post-pandemic tourism surge, and with it came the pressing question how do we welcome visitors without compromising what makes this place so special to those who live here?
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Rather than react, haywood County chose to plan, intentionally and collaboratively.
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Over 2,000 local voices came together to shape a comprehensive 10-year destination master plan that reflects shared values like stewardship, inclusivity and working better together.
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Alongside that vision came a refreshed Visit Haywood brand, one that helps tell the story of a region that's not only beautiful but thoughtful in how it grows.
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This plan isn't about chasing more visitors.
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It's about attracting the right kind of visitors, those who care, who connect and who leave the place better than they found it.
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In today's conversation, we dive into how this plan came to life, what it means for the future of Western North Carolina and how Haywood County is setting a new standard for sustainable, values-driven tourism.
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To help us unpack it all, I'm joined by Karina Refure, the Executive Director of Visit Haywood.
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Karina has been at the forefront of this planning process, helping guide a countywide effort that balances visitor experience with community well-being.
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From brand strategy to destination stewardship, karina brings a deep understanding of what it takes to create tourism that works for everyone locals, visitors and the natural environment alike.
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So let's dive into this thoughtful and inspiring conversation about the future of Haywood County and what it truly means to be welcoming, intentional and better together.
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You're listening to Exploration Local, a podcast designed to explore and celebrate the people and places that make the Blue Ridge and Southern Appalachian Mountains special and unique.
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My name is Mike Andrus, the host of Exploration Local.
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Join us on our journey to explore these mountains and discover how they fuel the spirit of adventure.
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We encourage you to wander far, but explore local.
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Let's go, karina, thanks so much for being here today.
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Welcome to the show.
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Good morning, Mike.
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Thanks for having me.
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I want to give listeners some context for those who might not be familiar what exactly is a destination marketing plan and why is it such an important tool for communities like Haywood County?
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There's probably a variety of different definitions you could come up with for it.
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For us, we really started the project because Haywood County saw a pretty significant increase in visitation COVID and post-COVID and we've all heard the terms over-tourism and in a rural community with lots of natural resources, we wanted to be really careful and make sure that we plan for the future and ensure that we don't get to challenges like over-tourism and other concerns that can arise.
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And the other definition I'll throw out there is like it or not, change happens and if we have a plan that's been initiated in advance, it can really help you address some of those unplanned for changes because the plan is done strategically.
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So it's about who is Haywood County, who do we want our visitors to be.
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What do we want this destination to look like in 10 years and how do we all work together to get there?
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You're going through this rollout of the refreshed Visit Haywood brand.
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How does this identity reflect what makes the county unique?
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And then, how are you all planning to use this to tell Haywood's story over the next decade?
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We embarked on two massive projects at the same time by doing a master plan concurrently with a rebranding initiative, and that was a lot, but a lot of it overlapped, and I know we'll talk in a little bit about community outreach, and and that was a lot, but a lot of it overlapped, and I know we'll talk in a little bit about community outreach and how important that was.
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But a lot of the questions that we were asking people about Haywood County, its five mountain towns, its assets, what people love about our community, also get reflected in the branding initiative.
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So we did those.
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We did the branding project because our old brand was fantastic but also so watered down.
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It was Visit NC Smokies and if you Google Smokies, visit Smokies, nc Smokies, any combination of the above there's literally over 100 different organizations using some version of that, and so, while Smokies are so well known, it also made it a lot harder for people to find us.
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So we did all this research and, ironically, the research came back as something as simple as Visit Haywood.
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It resonated with our visitors and it also resonated with our local stakeholders and it's really important when you're doing a brand that you try to have both.
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How we roll it out is in everything we do.
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Of course it's always hard with.
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We'll talk about Helene and how that impacted Haywood a little bit.
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So we'll talk about Helene and how that impacted Haywood a little bit, but we launched our brand the day before Helene hit, which was not very effective.
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But the good news is now that we've been leveraging that brand for coming on eight months.
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People are talking about it, they hear it, they understand it.
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Visit Haywood.
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It's actionable, people know what it means and we're just using it to help tell Haywood story, our authentic rural, small town story.
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Oh, I love that.
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So one of the things that sort of caught my attention here recently, since the last time that you and I talked, were these guiding principles, and what I'm referring to here and what we're referring to is this really big plan.
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It's a really thought out, well-crafted master plan.
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It's about 138 pages if you read it end to end, but there's a lot of really good stuff in there and, for people that want to, we're going to put a link in the show notes.
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But the guiding principles and those things that you all really kind of thought of better together welcoming to all and destination stewardship, those kind of things really, as you were going through this planning process, they seem to really reflect not just the goals but the values that you all have and how those values are really kind of shaping how this plan is going to play out.
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And I'd love to talk a little bit just a little bit about some of those guiding principles and why they were important right from the outset.
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It's interesting, they really bubbled to the top at the very beginning of this process.
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So developing this 138-page plan was a solid year-long process.
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It was not short.
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It involved a whole lot of surveys and outreach and community input and all of those things.
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And one of the tactics we used to gather feedback were one-on-one interviews with a variety of different stakeholders, namely elected officials, local mayors and aldermen and the like, and even in separate one-on-one interviews they all kept on saying a lot of the same things.
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Better Together, namely coming to the top and being welcoming to everybody, was just across the board.
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Destination Stewardship comes kind of separately than the Better Together and welcoming to all, because almost half of Haywood County is public lands and it's the number one reason why people choose to come here.
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So in order to ensure that we have those lands for our future, our children's future, et cetera, we have to protect them.
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So the destination values were pretty much universally agreed upon throughout the whole process, throughout a 12 month process, which is pretty impressive.
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But I really just so enjoyed seeing separate, individual one-on-one interviews and similar themes coming to the top.
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It speaks to the authenticity of the folks that participated in the process and that everybody really was working together to come up with the best possible plan.
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Yeah, and it seems like it was a way to really align all of your stakeholders too, like organically it was aligning because you were hearing these things over and over and over.
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So I guess those are the ways that it sort of bubbled to the top.
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Maybe you didn't start out with the principles, I don't know, maybe they just at the end of it.
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This is just what came about as you were kind of starting on the front end of this plan.
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We did not start with really any outcome in mind, other than probably knowing that stewardship was going to be a piece of the puzzle because of who Haywood County is.
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But everything else that came out of the plan truly organically came out of the plan the research and the whole process.
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Nice and that seemed to lead to these pillars, if you will, or these objectives, and there were four major pillars that I think you all laid out or that really kind of came that surfaced up and you guys sort or these objectives, and there were four major pillars that I think you all laid out or that really kind of came that surfaced up and you guys sort of laid out.
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And so, building on the principles that we just talked about, I love to kind of unpack a little bit what these four pillars are, because it seems like that really kind of guides the rest of this conversation.
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The pillars are really a way of organizing all of the work in the 138 pages Because you can look at this and it's kind of overwhelming, right there's a whole lot of objectives and strategies and tactics and it's a 10-year plan, so it's not meant to be completed in the next 12 or 24 months.
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The four pillars just help us organize ourselves so that we aren't quite so overwhelmed when you're looking at the plan in its entirety.
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So we have number one, which is what destination management or marketing organizations are really well known for, and that is strengthening awareness and perception of the Haywood County brand, ie marketing, telling our story.
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Awareness and perception of the Haywood County brand, ie marketing, telling our story.
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How do we tell the Haywood County story in a way that it resonates with visitors and encourages people to want to come here?
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But that's not simple because there's a lot of beautiful Western North Carolina communities that are our neighbors, that have similar assets, similar stories.
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So we just want to make sure that we're telling ours in a slightly unique way and hopefully Haywood County then becomes you know, gets put on somebody's list that they want to come vacation here.
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The second bucket of work, or pillar, is to diversify tourism product offerings and experiences that enhance the destination appeal for all.
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The short version of that is product development.
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What do we do beyond marketing to encourage people who have already come to want to come back, to build out the experiences that Haywood County can offer, to ensure that we are appealing to as many potential visitors as possible?
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And I'll caveat that with this is throughout the whole plan.
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This is not about volume of visitors, it's about quality of visitor, the right visitor.
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At the end of the day, yes, our ultimate mission is to drive economic growth and to drive spending at our local businesses, and it keeps that economic cycle moving, but we still want the right people to come here, so product development can definitely help us do that.
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The third pillar is to promote stewardship of our natural resources and our outdoor recreation opportunities.
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Again, that's the number one reason people come here.
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Our research very clearly shows that and we are so blessed to have 46 miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway, second only to one other county on the entire stretch of the entirety of the Blue Ridge Parkway.
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We are the biggest section North Carolina section of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, including Kaloochee Valley, which is where the elk were reintroduced and roam freely.
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We have the Appalachian Trail, which is its own national park, and we have Pisgah National Forest, including Shining Rock Wilderness.
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So we have so many federal natural assets and we really want to work with our federal land partners and our visitors and our local residents to protect them and ensure that they're here and continuing to drive our economy for decades to come.
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And then the fourth pillar is really about us, the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority, as a business, as an organization.
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How do we have the bandwidth to lead these other three pillars of work if we don't look internally at ourselves?
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So that one's not as exciting to folks reading the plan, perhaps, but it's a necessity and any business has to look at themselves as well as their outreaching work.
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Yeah Well, I think it just kind of speaks to the thoughtfulness behind this plan too, not only what you want to do for the tourists and for the county and preserving and protecting, but you are a large part of what's driving that marketing.
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So looking inward, I think, is really really key, and it sounds like you all are doing that in a really insightful and thoughtful way too.
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One of the things that's interesting right now and I don't know if this is still true because I haven't looked at the recent map, but you mentioned the Blue Ridge Parkway and all these areas these are really some of the areas that are really truly wide open.
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You can look up and down the Blue Ridge Parkway and there's a lot of areas that you know as you sort of go north.
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There's a lot of sections that are still affected by Helene and they're still recovering from Helene.
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But here in your area, and heading southbound.
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This is a lot of stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway that is open right now as of 2025.
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We're very lucky that our stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway was not as impacted significantly by Helene as some of the other sections.
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We still have one piece, one segment, that's closed and I know that the Blue Ridge Parkway staff are working incredibly hard, as they are on the entire stretch of the parkway to reopen as much as they can.
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They know how critical the parkway is to to gateway communities, of which we have five, um, and, and those gateway communities rely on the visitors coming to experience the parkway and then they come into our towns to shop and have lunch and spend the night, and so we're just so proud of our, our national park friends and the work that they're doing.
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But yes, we have almost all of our 46 miles are open and ready to welcome you today.
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I love it, love it, absolutely love it.
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Let's dip back a little bit.
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Talk about community engagement and that piece where you really reached out to a lot of the stakeholders.
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We're kind of started out with this whole process reaching out to all these stakeholders, and you also mentioned collaboration.
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I'd love to talk a little bit about what that experience was like talking to local stakeholders, what their feedback was, what their feedback was about going through a process like this, and then how do you continue to engage those same stakeholders?
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That's a lot of work.
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I mean we're all so busy, right, it's very difficult to encourage folks to make time for something.
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But the good news is Haywood County as a community is incredibly collaborative and again, that certainly bubbled to the top through those destination values and people individually stating we've got to work together.
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But we my team and I and the consultants that we hired to help lead this project it was so critical from the outset that we gather as much community feedback as possible Because tourism, while it drives our economy, it also impacts our locals.
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Some locals think it impacts them positively, others may disagree with that assessment, but at the end of the day it's driving our total economy, which means jobs, which means businesses, which means restaurants that are here for us to enjoy in the winter, when it's not as busy.
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That probably wouldn't be here without the visitor economy to support them.
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So we intentionally held public community input sessions and we published them.
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We work with the local newspapers to get the word out.
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We fed people at those sessions to encourage more participation.
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Food always brings people in.
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It does, and it's worth it because we can honestly say over 500 local stakeholders, business owners, residents participated in our in-person sessions and then another almost 330 participated in the online surveys, and that's not including the surveys that we did to visitors and to travel journalists.
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So that gets our participation up.
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Over 2,000 different folks had input into this plan.
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So it was always always important that this could truly be Haywood County's destination master plan, not the TDA's master plan.
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It's rooted in tourism and it's about the tourism economy, but this is a very famous saying that's shared in the destination space If you have a beautiful place or a wonderful place to visit, it also then becomes a great place to live.
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And if it's a great place to live, it's a great place to work.
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So, and they're all connected with each other.
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So we're happy to lead the having a great place to visit piece of it, knowing that it will also drive back to we'll have a great place to live, which also means a great place to work, and it just keeps that, that economic cycle churning.
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Yeah, and stewardship is a big part of that.
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I mean, because, you know, one of the things I know is very important to you all and as you and I, as you and I have talked is not trying to overlove some of these areas.
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You, you also want to protect some of these areas as well.
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So I know that stewardship is is pretty big.
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How do you strike the balance between the tourism growth and also preserving what makes this area so special?
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That's where it goes back to.
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It's not about quantity of visitors, it's about quality of visitors.
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So we're intentionally seeking visitors who align with our values, who want to come and see the wild elk from a safe distance and respect and understand that these are wild animals.
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A lot of it's messaging, education, all of the above.
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Thankfully, Haywood County does not have a lot of assets that are overloved yet, but by knowing that now, and knowing which ones are a little bit more heavily trafficked and which ones are not, we can create trails, we can create maps.
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We can suggest to visitors try this, you know this location as opposed to that location and help disperse those visitors that do come.
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And all of the same information that we're producing on behalf of visitors is also fantastic for our residents as well, who may find new trails or new secret hideaways that they didn't know existed.
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And all of that is also rooted in safety.
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We've learned through this process.
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We worked with haywood county search and rescue, our local sheriff's office, our emergency services, and we've learned what areas of haywood county tend to drive more rescues and which ones don't okay and so we're also leveraging that information, because we didn't know that before this whole plan process.
00:20:49.211 --> 00:20:52.300
Right, okay, which areas?
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If we're going to send visitors to an area that's a little more challenging, ensure that they're prepared, that they've you know, they understand what they're getting into, that they're going to an area without cell service and they aren't going to be able to call for help.
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All of these things are also important for people who just moved here or perhaps are new to hiking.
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All of these things, then impact our friends and neighbors at emergency services, search and rescue, etc.
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So we want to do everything we can with all of this information to ensure that people follow the principles of leave no trace but also protect themselves, because then it keeps our other, our other friends, safe too.
00:21:33.593 --> 00:21:46.028
Yeah Well, let's switch a little bit and talk a little bit about the outcome, some of the outcomes of this, the uh, the, the plan and the work that you all went through, the front end work that you all went through.
00:21:46.028 --> 00:21:53.094
I love to know some just kind of the interesting I don't know if you have stats or interesting things about what people are looking to do.
00:21:53.094 --> 00:22:00.336
You know, as they're giving you feedback, as tourists are giving you feedback, what were some of the really kind of key findings that came out of this plan?
00:22:02.006 --> 00:22:11.057
Well, it's always interesting when you do a plan like this, or even marketing, because we all tend to, as human beings, think about ourselves first.
00:22:11.057 --> 00:22:13.442
So my husband and I are very active.
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We love getting out and hiking and biking and enjoying this beautiful place that we are so lucky enough to live in, and so I went into this, assuming that that's what our visitors want too.
00:22:25.037 --> 00:22:26.358
Well, it's not.
00:22:26.358 --> 00:22:30.834
Our visitors come for passive recreation, not active recreation.
00:22:30.834 --> 00:22:34.307
I'm not saying this doesn't apply to all, this is just the majority.
00:22:35.250 --> 00:22:37.397
And that speaks to who our visitors are.
00:22:37.397 --> 00:22:43.656
We tend to skew a little bit older on the visitor scale, which is also going to go back to that branding and marketing and messaging.
00:22:43.656 --> 00:22:45.188
How do we find younger visitors?
00:22:45.188 --> 00:22:53.115
So there's so many tentacles that come out of a plan like this, but I always love learning something that I wasn't expecting.
00:22:53.525 --> 00:23:04.455
So passive recreation people love to drive the parkway and go to an overlook and have a picnic and just simply sit and enjoy the beautiful view.
00:23:04.455 --> 00:23:14.508
They love going to Cataloochee Valley in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and they'll literally pull a chair out and sit and watch the elk from a chair out and sit and watch the elk from a distance.
00:23:14.508 --> 00:23:17.153
So not necessarily as active.
00:23:17.153 --> 00:23:21.612
So the number one thing we know that our visitors like to do is passive recreation.
00:23:21.612 --> 00:23:38.192
But, that said, our residents like more active recreation, and so one of our research studies showed that our residents really want more access to our waterways, and so some of your listeners probably don't know this.
00:23:38.273 --> 00:23:47.086
Haywood County is one of only two headwater counties in the entire country, meaning 100% of our water originates from within the county.
00:23:47.086 --> 00:23:55.431
So our water is pure, pristine and very, very special, and we have all of these incredible rivers.
00:23:55.431 --> 00:24:05.038
That can be a challenge in the time of a hurricane, but during non-hurricane times are absolutely beautiful assets that very few people have access to.
00:24:05.038 --> 00:24:14.565
I'd love to get out on the river and have a place where I could teach my kid to fish or where I could go tubing.
00:24:14.565 --> 00:24:36.894
So as we talk about product development or outcomes of this plan, we are working towards developing some of those assets that our residents said they wanted, because then the residents get to use it 365 days a year, but our visitors also get to enjoy it when they come.
00:24:37.744 --> 00:24:42.057
Yeah, and some of those diversifying products, some of those tourism products.
00:24:42.057 --> 00:24:47.367
So you mentioned the rivers and yes, you have a lot of amazing rivers around here and some of the trails.
00:24:47.367 --> 00:24:50.756
What are some of the other things that came out of it?
00:24:50.756 --> 00:25:01.750
And then maybe a follow-up to that would be for those people who are coming in here for passive recreation, what is the average kind of day that they're staying or their length of their stay that they're here?
00:25:03.146 --> 00:25:03.869
So I'll start with that.
00:25:03.869 --> 00:25:21.076
Our average visitor stay is 3.9, 3.9, 3.9 nights, which is always an odd number, so we'll just round that to say four nights, five days, and part of that is we have a lot of vacation rentals in haywood county.
00:25:21.176 --> 00:25:35.679
So those those definitely appeal to families, multi-generation groups that want to come and they can stay in one big house together and and that leads to longer stays, I think, sometimes than your traditional hotel or motel.
00:25:35.679 --> 00:25:42.699
And in terms of other product development, the research really showed some gaps.
00:25:42.699 --> 00:25:49.185
We don't have a lot of activities for younger children and so family-friendly activities.
00:25:49.185 --> 00:25:54.309
If one of our goals is to start attracting families with kids to come here.
00:25:54.309 --> 00:26:25.727
So it's cloudy or rainy or and you can't enjoy those beautiful vistas something that helps fill in those the what do they do during those five days when they can't do the number one reason they're coming here.
00:26:25.727 --> 00:26:37.880
So whether that's A children's museum or bowling, I mean, there's so many different activities that could fill that gap.
00:26:37.880 --> 00:26:54.971
We did not specifically identify what those indoor activities should be, just that we need family friendly and indoor and those will really help round out the Haywood County outdoor economy and support and give people more reasons to come and come back All right.
00:26:56.773 --> 00:27:07.103
So the plan itself we said at the beginning it was a 10-year plan and when you look at the numbers 2026 through 2035, it doesn't add up to 10, a 10-year split.
00:27:07.103 --> 00:27:09.878
So there was, and there's, a reason for that.
00:27:09.878 --> 00:27:13.746
Right now, you mentioned Helene and most all of our listeners know that we've gone through that.
00:27:13.746 --> 00:27:14.163
We're on the other side for that right now.
00:27:14.163 --> 00:27:14.826
You mentioned Helene and most all of our listeners know that we've gone through that.
00:27:14.826 --> 00:27:18.338
We're on the other side of that right now, or coming on the other side of that.
00:27:18.338 --> 00:27:27.304
What did that, how, how, how did Helene kind of affect your being able to push, go fully on this particular plan?
00:27:28.132 --> 00:27:29.297
Well, it definitely delayed it.
00:27:29.297 --> 00:27:35.196
The plan was about 90, 95% done in the month of September.
00:27:35.196 --> 00:27:46.255
And then we got hit by the hurricane and that obviously impacted all of our partners and even the day to day work that that we were doing here in the tourism office.
00:27:46.255 --> 00:27:56.913
And then we also had to say wait, did all of the work that we all of 12 months worth of work and research and everything on this plan.
00:27:56.913 --> 00:28:04.272
How do we have to revisit any of that because of the impacts of this pretty significant storm?
00:28:04.272 --> 00:28:10.112
And the good news is the majority of the research and the work is very much still valid.
00:28:10.112 --> 00:28:14.219
All of the community input still applies.
00:28:14.420 --> 00:28:20.336
We just had to shift some of the priorities that we were initially looking at.
00:28:20.336 --> 00:28:23.280
So I had mentioned safety earlier on.
00:28:23.280 --> 00:28:27.675
Safety was let's talk about that in two or three years.
00:28:27.675 --> 00:28:29.622
Well, now we're going to talk about safety this year.
00:28:29.622 --> 00:28:38.664
So we've just shifted priorities, tactics when we're going to do things, and obviously recovering from Helene is the number one priority.
00:28:38.664 --> 00:29:16.056
So some of the projects that we really wanted to look at, like, say, building a fishing pier somewhere out onto the Pigeon River obviously that's not going to happen immediately because first we have to clean up, but that's the great part about collaboration and partners is because we're working with our towns and groups like Haywood Waterways and Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, and by all of us communicating and working together, we can hopefully overlap projects where they make sense and start moving things forward when the community is ready things forward when the community is ready.
00:29:16.076 --> 00:29:21.570
And I know the last time that you and I had a conversation about this, you were very mindful of and I think this goes back to the stewardship piece.
00:29:21.570 --> 00:29:28.640
You were very mindful of saying it's not time right now to push a heavy push to say let's, let's start implementing a whole lot of things.
00:29:28.640 --> 00:29:38.071
It was about we're we're recovering, we're going to kind of softly roll the beginning of this, this piece out and, um, I think that may be a little bit of what kind of what you're you're talking about.
00:29:38.071 --> 00:29:47.951
So you just mentioned collaborative, and I feel like that word has come up a number of times in this conversation so far and that ties back to one of the guiding principles of of better together.
00:29:47.951 --> 00:29:52.635
Um, and that really kind of speaks, I think, to that power of the collaboration piece as well.
00:29:52.635 --> 00:30:02.846
What role do the partnerships with local businesses, government nonprofits and you mentioned some of those just a moment ago how do they play into bringing this whole plan to life?
00:30:03.950 --> 00:30:06.009
Well, we all have to work together to make it happen.
00:30:06.009 --> 00:30:23.303
So, as the Tourism Development Authority or Destination Management Organization, we don't own any of these assets, right, we don't own the federal lands, we don't have land on the Pigeon River or on Jonathan Creek.
00:30:23.303 --> 00:30:42.403
So it's up to us working hand in hand with partners who do have those assets or do have that attraction, or that business owner that wants to build that indoor science museum or some beautiful art trail that's dedicated to elk.
00:30:42.403 --> 00:30:45.141
There's a million different things that could happen.
00:30:45.141 --> 00:30:47.549
We're here to help provide the data, the research.
00:30:47.549 --> 00:30:49.633
We have some funding available through our grant programs to help support them.
00:30:49.633 --> 00:30:53.497
We have some funding available through our grant programs to help support them.
00:30:53.497 --> 00:31:00.365
But if we don't have those communication mechanisms with those partners, they're never going to happen.
00:31:01.404 --> 00:31:02.585
And better together?
00:31:02.585 --> 00:31:03.885
It's funny.
00:31:03.885 --> 00:31:12.747
Those words literally just kept coming up through the whole process, whether community input sessions, one-on-one interviews, et cetera.
00:31:12.747 --> 00:31:30.980
And one of our board members loves to go to yard sales and she ended up at a yard sale and there was this giant sign that said better together on it, and so she bought this, this old sign that says better together, and she brought it to a board meeting and gifted it to us and it's hanging up in the office.
00:31:30.980 --> 00:31:33.634
And so the team and I just love it to us.
00:31:33.634 --> 00:31:35.336
And it's hanging up in the office, oh cool.
00:31:35.336 --> 00:31:36.298
And so the team and I just love it.
00:31:36.298 --> 00:31:42.429
And we have this little sign that says better together, because as a team, we're better together.
00:31:42.429 --> 00:31:44.833
As a board of directors, we're all better together.
00:31:44.833 --> 00:31:48.461
And then as a county, collectively, we absolutely are all better together.
00:31:48.721 --> 00:31:51.352
Oh, that's good, and they carry that thought out, at least in my brain.
00:31:51.352 --> 00:32:03.964
The right type of person coming in here and experiencing our community, whether it's leave no trace, principles, whether it's just recreating responsibly, safely, that all kind of brings that element in as well.
00:32:03.964 --> 00:32:05.787
So we're continuing to be better together.
00:32:06.490 --> 00:32:06.829
We are.
00:32:08.931 --> 00:32:09.171
Okay.
00:32:09.171 --> 00:32:22.238
So this next question it's a big loaded question and I know that when I ask it and so we can kind of take it in little bits and pieces Can you kind of hit the highlights of how you see the next 10 years kind of laying out and rolling out in this?
00:32:22.298 --> 00:32:27.460
plan.
00:32:27.460 --> 00:32:36.723
I knew, going into this, that adopting a 10 year plan can be so many plans.
00:32:36.723 --> 00:32:37.464
We've all heard this.
00:32:37.464 --> 00:32:40.066
Right, get put on a shelf and they collect dust.
00:32:40.066 --> 00:32:42.067
We are absolutely not doing that.
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